What A Wolf Said
The wolf did not speak the way Anya had thought. The wolf did not move its mouth or wag its tail or do any of the things in the storybooks. The wolf simply held Anya's eye, and somewhere in the centre of Anya's head, words formed.
She could not have explained it later. The closest she could come was to say: it was like remembering somebody else's thought.
*I am Vorel,* said the wolf. *I am old. You are a child. Why have you come?*
Anya answered with her own voice, because that felt right.
"The wolves are leaving the forest. I have read enough to know that this is bad, in time. I want to know why."
Vorel looked at her with great attention. Then she — Vorel was a she, Anya somehow knew — laid her head down on her paws.
*Three things,* said Vorel.
*One: the deer have changed. They are smarter now, fast, and there are fewer of them. Hunting is harder. We are tired.*
*Two: the new road. Last summer the men cut a road through the eastern part of the forest. It scared the deer that were left. It also cut our hunting paths in half. We cannot move easily.*
*Three: the village's dogs. There are now many. They come into the forest at night. They are too many for us. We do not want to fight them. So we have moved away.*
Anya had her notebook out. She wrote it all down, very fast.
"If we — if the village — fixed the road and kept the dogs in at night, would the wolves come back?"